Humanism and Human Rights

Tuesday, May 3, 2011

I came into this class with a very clear idea of what I thought was a right, but many of my preconceptions about those rights have been challenged throughout the semester. While I feel that the definition that I began with is not incorrect, I have come to recognize that it was insufficient to cover the full range of possible discourse on the matter. Class discussions along with the making of the documentaries has lead me to the realization that it is not enough to simply know what a right is. Even within the realm of rights, there appears to be a built in distinction between rights that are labeled as either or human or civil. Although equality and fairness is the focus of many of the civil rights that I have come to appreciate as an American, these rights are not extended to all human beings; thus, a divide is created. On the other hand, human rights are intended to extend far beyond the borders of a single government. However, as we often discussed, even those recognized human rights are not necessarily obeyed or endorsed uniformly by those nations that recognize them. As we have seemed to highlight in our discussions, it is not the right that is necessarily in question so much as the corresponding responsibility to respect/protect that right that is not consistently recognized. On the state level, it has become questionable whether or not there is a responsibility to consistently respect and honor these rights even when dealing with non-citizens. One of my main questions in the examination of this point is what exactly is it that potentially removes moral agency from the state and how does that differ from any other gathering of self-interested people? Of course, I expect no answer to this question, and I have not intention of proposing my own at the moment; however, I thought that this would be a good example of some of the many issues that this course has made me begin to consider. Perhaps on a more personal note, questions such as these have forced me to reconsider the ethical standards that I place upon myself and how they may differ from the standards that I have for other people.

I am amazed at how quickly this semester has passed. Our much-anticipated documentaries are completed—and awesome. This class tackled many tough topics, and we definitely had some good laughs. I think human rights are important and I realize now that active effort is required in order to uphold these rights. We go Rhodes; we are some of the most privileged people in the world right now--not many people our age even have a laptop. This class showed me that we must capitalize on our position to make positive change. In crafting our documentary, I was able to approach and converse with a variety of people I would otherwise have never given the time of day. I heard some incredible stories, even got beat at Scrabble by a street person at the Manna House (he was good). What I uncovered was a vicious system of racism and oppression, the likes of which whites for the most part ignore, and blacks for the most part cope. Of course, it is not that simple. Many white people do not directly or at least consciously contribute to the system, and many black people are not oppressed. This is because the system is not directly tied to race; it is tied to wealth. According to Marx, the divide is between the bourgeois and the proletariat. Unfortunately the system has not changed to greatly since slavery; many blacks remain the proletariat. The cop at the beginning of our documentary emphasizes this point. He says he didn’t realize being a police officer meant enforcing class divisions.I think everyone picked really interesting film topics, and the ones I’ve seen thus far have turned out really well. It amazes me after a semester of studying human rights just how flawed and insensitive people’s views can be toward the subject. I cannot believe, for instance, that churches, the alleged moral backbone of society, still condemn homosexuality. I can’t believe the gross human rights violations my country shamelessly commits on other countries. This class has opened my eyes to the vast amount of real problems plaguing our society. I look forward to addressing and overcoming these issues as we strive toward a better tomorrow.

This has been by far my favorite class of the semester and has help to further cultivate my philosophical interests. I took a class abroad on the contemporary theories of justice, which skimmed the surface of many topics that we discussed. There was a significant difference between the classroom discussions I experienced in Belfast, Northern Ireland compared to our weekly class meetings. In Belfast, our conversation focused mainly on the issues brought about by philosophers and their theories. There was little room for discussion about our own perspectives, and I found that the students “voice” was not original, but rather based on what they had learned. What I really enjoyed about our class was the broad variance of opinions on many issues that are currently affecting our world today. I don’t think it is good for all upper level classes, but I particularly thought it was great how we had a wide range of majors to contribute their background and knowledge. It is through having this broad range of perspectives that we are able to recognize the many personalities, characteristics, and further see how we can communicate despite the differences.

Many interests were portrayed through the documentaries that were made for our final. I really enjoyed how we could view everyone’s work, rather than just turning in a paper or taking a final. I think that through having to research a topic that we are interested in our work was significantly stronger than if a topic had been assigned to us. Also, we were able to bring to light many issues that may not have been discussed in class.

Through our discussions and through our readings a lot of my perspective on many issues has been altered. There are very few classes that I can say this about or that have made an impact on my worldview, but I definitely think this class has made me more aware and concerned with the world around me. This can be attributed to the students who helped to create a classroom where their opinions will be respected, but also questioned, which forces us beyond our comfort zone. We have to search to find our voice when it is being questioned. This class has forced to me find a perspective and an opinion based on something more than just my thoughts about it. Thank you for a great semester!

My experience in this class was one of the more complicated ones that I have had here at Rhodes. Having my own fairly strong opinions about the who’s and what’s of human rights prior to the class, I can safely say that upon completion of the course, I may be a little less sure of myself. That is not to say that this class did not answer a lot of questions—it certainly did—but it more or less exemplified to me how difficult and complex the human rights discourse really is. To me, even the language of certain texts and documents was vague and, at times, even empty and rhetorical. However, that being the case actually led me to formulate my own definitions and interpretations, leading to a more personal journey through the material. While this may be good for my own individual and personal growth, I can see how, problematically, human rights for many people actually are more of an idealistic set of regulations that we strive for—rather than being actually guaranteed to all humans by virtue of their humanness. This issue of the unachievable ideal may indeed be the largest human rights violation of them all. To not see the validity and concreteness in guaranteeing those very basic, yet very foundational rights to all humans is the violation.

In dealing with human rights violations closely (re: the denial of homosexuals the right to marry), I was able to more clearly realize how involved I can and in fact should be. In creating a documentary film about these violations, I was forced to dive deep into human rights issues—why they exist, how people are really affected, and how other humans can step in to right these violations. Overall, the experience with becoming personally acquainted with real issues in real time helped me develop my personal views and morals more solidly. I have never been more awake to the issues of our world than today. I may not have all of the answers, but I certainly can point to places where we can begin to improve our world to become founded on a more humanly oriented principle.

As a closing blog-post for a humanism and human rights class, it would be hard not to bring up the recent, and undeniably controversial, dealings of the U.S. within Pakistan, specifically the killing of Osama bin Laden. While the ultimate symbolic meaning of bin Laden’s death is up for interpretation, it seems to me that, at least with my current understanding of the situation, there are certain issues relevant to human rights that need discussing. Chief of those issues are the invasion by U.S. forces of Pakistani borders as well as the assassination itself (in addition to the killing of five others). While there is no doubt to me that the world without Osama bin Laden is a better place, I am still unsure as to how much better. In addition, the breeching of borders will need to be addressed, and so will the reactions to the assassination. In my opinion, there is a difference between celebrating one’s death and celebrating the relief that one’s death brings. Seeing the reactions on the streets, college campuses, in front of the White House, and on various social media networks reminded me too much of the celebrations that were seen in parts of the Middle East when the twin towers collapsed in 2001 (as many have already pointed out). Perhaps I am bringing in too much perspective here, and not committing myself to the full meaning of bin Laden’s death, but that, to me, comes from my training in humanism—my training to do what it takes to grant humans the right to be human.

When I first signed up for this course, I expected to talk mostly about torture, and the democracy surrounding the practice. However, I was pleasantly surprised to find that the class delved into a number of topics, not only torture, that were relevant and controversial in our society today. Being a young person in today's society has helped me, I think, to have a more open mind towards many of the issues that we talked about, and it was good to see so many people get charged up about these issues. I think that it is largely up to our generation to fix the things that we see as "problems" in today's culture, and without classes like this, I think that people would be much less informed.

What really struck me about the class, however, was how open everyone was to talking about these issues, debating these issues, in a non-confrontational and respectful way. I think that many of the topics that we covered were topics that easily flare tempers, and it was reassuring to see that our small class community could talk about things without coming to blows. Now, I understand that our classroom community is one that does not represent the majority of people in today's society. But if we can come together as a small unit, even, and begin to create change, then I think there is opportunity for the masses to follow.

Overall, I think this Humanism and Human Rights class was a brilliant mind-opening experience for myself, and I hope that I can take the values that the class seems to have come to accept, and use them in the future to create change. Now that I have been fully informed on so many of today's controversial issues, I feel that I can look back to the class, and the UDHR to better understand my own personal value system.

I am amazed at how quickly this semester has passed. Our much-anticipated documentaries are completed—and awesome. This class tackled many tough topics, and we definitely had some good laughs. I think human rights are important and I realize now that active effort is required in order to uphold these rights. We go Rhodes; we are some of the most privileged people in the world right now. Not many people our age have a laptop. This class showed me that we must capitalize on our position to make positive change. In crafting our documentary, I was able to approach and converse with a variety of people I would otherwise have never given the time of day. I heard some incredible stories, even got beat at Scrabble by a street person at the Manna House (he was good). What I uncovered was a vicious system of racism and oppression, the likes of which whites for the most part ignore, and blacks for the most part cope. Of course, it is not that simple. Many white people do not directly contribute to the system, and many black people are not oppressed. This is because the system is not directly tied to race; it is tied to wealth. According to Marx, the divide is between the bourgeois and the proletariat. Unfortunately the system has not changed to greatly since slavery; many blacks remain the proletariat. The cop at the beginning of our documentary emphasizes this point. He says he didn’t realize being a police officer meant enforcing class divisions.I think everyone picked really interesting film topics, and the ones I’ve seen thus far have turned out really well. It amazes me after a semester of studying human rights just how flawed and insensitive people’s views can be toward the subject. I cannot believe, for instance, that churches, the alleged moral backbone of society, still condemn homosexuality. I can’t believe the gross human rights violations perpetrated on other countries’ people by my own country. This class has opened my eyes to the vast amount of real problems plaguing our society. I look forward to addressing and overcoming these issues as we strive toward a better tomorrow.

Monday, May 2, 2011

John Gilderbloom discusses the economic, social, and political dimensions of the housing crisis in Invisible City: Poverty, Housing, and New Urbanism. Gilderbloom explains that, according to the Millennial Housing Commission, affordability is the single greatest housing challenge facing the United States. Federal programs such as the MHC define housing affordability in terms of the ratio of income to housing costs. The individuals who spend more than 50 percent of their income on housing are considered to have a “severe” housing problem. Over 28 million individuals who either rented or owned homes in 2000 fell into this category. Gilderbloom believes that there are many reasons households with this problem struggle to pay housing costs. The main reason, he explains, is that the income of these individuals is insufficient to cover even the most meager rents or payments. In addition, these households have problems maintaining enough income to afford housing costs due to “age, disability, or the lack of steady full-time work” (Gilderbloom 16). Having a full-time job, however, does not exempt households from facing housing issues; over a quarter of the 11 million individuals facing severe housing affordability problems in 2000 had full-time employment incomes based on minimum wage (Gilderbloom 16).

Although the quality of American housing surpasses the quality of housing in most parts of the world, available low-income housing in the United States is mainly located in poor areas that are isolated from opportunity and jobs. Gilderbloom explains that, even though there has been a sharp reduction in “the number of units that are overcrowded, lack plumbing and sanitation, or show signs of structural dilapidation” in the last two decades, low-income families in the United States are still faced with overcrowding in homes and higher transportation expenses (Gilderbloom 17). The U.S. Census Bureau defines overcrowding as “any housing unit that has more than one person per room” (Gilderbloom 26). Unfortunately, the rate of overcrowding increased by 5.7 percent between 1990 and 2000, an estimated increase of 6 million housing units. Gilderbloom explains that the rise of housing and rent costs in the past decade has also had a detrimental impact on family formation. The Federal Reserve Board found that the price of housing for married couples with children rose 79 percent between 1983 and 1998, nearly three times as much as it did for couples without children (Gilderbloom 29). Many young couples are presently choosing to either limit the size of their families or to not have children at all. James Surowiecki, a journalist for the New Yorker, argues that the cost of having children has risen much faster than the cost of being childless; the increasing burden of offspring is “attributable to housing and education costs (Gilderbloom 29).

Sunday, May 1, 2011

Let it be known that this class has helped remove several veils that covered me before taking this class. First and most importantly I believe that human rights while extremely important are a losing battle when I look at the way not only the American government but other have specifically limited the fair treatment of all citizens and non-citizens in their own country. Even in America we continue to scape goat multiple groups inlcluding MUSLIM-americans, who only represent 0.8% to 2.6%, something compribale to the jewish-american population. Still they are a complex group consisting of the following ethnic backgrounds: (Below is from WIKI on Islam in the United States)--->

" Native-born American Muslims are mainly African Americans who make up 24% of the total Muslim population. Many of these have converted to Islam during the last seventy years. Conversion to Islam in prison,[10] and in large urban areas[11] has also contributed to its growth over the years. South Asian immigrants (from India, Pakistan and Bangladesh) make up 26% of the Muslim population, and Arabs make up 26% of the population. The remaining 24% percent is from other groups."

SO we have to understand that when we scapegoat a religion we are actually attacking numerous ethnic groups, religious and economic classes and a mix of Americans who have been here for a 100 years or a 100 weeks. Either way, the post 9-11 world, has shown human rights of Muslims in the World and in this country have not been Protected.

SECONDLY, the lecture and preceding Q and A with Dan Savage was also deeply moving and in some ways saddening. I have been depressed on and off due to my procrastination in school, my visual injury, my general lack of a future before and after going through rhodes, but never to the extent that I would contemplate suicide. I moved a lot growing up as well and I got picked on so I could relate to that as well. But for 15 and 16 gay boys and lesbian girls to actually feel that their futures were not worth continued living made me realize that this society has lost its love of community and of the good other. When did we as americans really accept people for being different you might SAY, and I would respond that the fact that most immigrants have been accepted as American is a good sign, and most people accept your religion it be Buddhism or Judaism, still it is sad that my gay brothers and sisters have been given the short end of the civil rights stick, when all they want to do is have marriage and kids like the rest of America. SO my first solution, we make it easier for gay couples and infertile couples to adopts --- maybe a 2 page form and a cover letter, then someone talks with them and within a year they can get a child if its a good match.

Lastly, I have learned that documentary film is a tool and a form of academic expression that can easily be disseminated and convince others of the need for either addressing social injustice or positing potential policy solutions.

My last thing to say is thank you to all my peers and Professors for sometimes putting up with this crazy scholar here. I hope that someday whatever issue or idea we privledge above the rest can help get fixed or we can create more awareness and education in the next generations. Hopefully I will be teaching someone in Memphis Next school year and I hope to stay in touch with you all.

Monday, April 18, 2011

A couple of weeks ago, Ben wrote a blog post concerning sweatshops and an economic defense of their existence and continued support. I began to formulate a comment in response to the post, but as I typed out my observations and counter-arguments, I came across some questions—big quesitons. Thinking about it further, I felt as if these questions were integral to our study of human rights, and merited a post of their own, thus…

One of the most convincing arguments in support of the defense of sweatshops is the claim that it is misguided and ignorant to hold businesses in the developing world to the same standards as those in the developed world. With this in mind, it is nearly impossible to define aspects of labor such as low wages and unsatisfactory working conditions in countries that are incredibly different from our own. Low wages and unsatisfactory conditions by American standards, although they may be troubling to us, do not necessarily translate into low wages and unsatisfactory conditions in the host country. Like Powell mentions in his article, sweatshops offer a considerable improvement from the state of abject poverty and/or unsteady, unreliable employment. He notes that sweatshop wages are more than double the national average in Cambodia, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Honduras. When I hear this quantitative, measureable evidence as to the benefits of sweatshops, I find it hard to convince myself to support the upholding of so-called human rights in place of increased incomes for poor people (although I may still disagree with Powell's argument that sweatshops actually lead to overall development, but that's another conversation). The fact that sweatshop labor may actually be a step up from destitution merely solidifies what we should already know: the world is not fair. Although we're not often brought face-to-face with this fact, none of us should be surprised by this. If you live in the US, you are immeasurably "better off" than those born in any number of other countries. Opposing sweatshops by boycotting companies that employ sweatshop labor translates into a denial of increased incomes for desperately poor people for the sake of an idealized moral or philosophical standard— namely, the fact that you are personally uncomfortable with the idea of workers being paid what you consider to be low wages and working in what you consider to be unsatisfactory conditions to make your Nike kicks. Yes; wages and conditions in sweatshops can be considered "bad". But boycotting those companies may be worse. Although we feel better about retracting our support from companies who engage in this "bad" practice, I would argue that it is our true social responsibility to think through our actions all the way to their final outcome and the real-world implications of that outcome. In fact, some of you may agree with me in saying that it is not just our social responsibility, but our moral duty as well.

In spite of Powell's cogent argument in defense of sweatshops (and the supplemental case that I just finished arguing in the last two paragraphs), I have to recognize the fact that I fail to be philosophically, morally or socially satisfied by this approach. It seems to me that neither reaction to sweatshops (boycott such companies or increase support for them) goes far enough to redeem the dignity of the sweatshop laborers. Do I believe that the low compensation and poor working conditions of many sweatshops are an affront to human dignity and a violation of what I consider to be a human's inherent rights? Yes. I don't know whether or not underdeveloped economies would be better off without sweatshops, but I do know that the lesser-of-two-evils argument that defends sweatshops strikes me as pitiful and maybe even immoral. As our world becomes increasingly interconnected, and our interactions—both economic and social—become more complicated, I still find it necessary to maintain our principles. We cannot sacrifice our conviction on the altar of economics or utility. But here's the trick: we must seek to maintain our principles in a socially responsible way instead of blindly appeasing our own consciences. If what mollifies our conscience leads to the calculable "worsening-off" of the very person we seek to help, I can't see how we've done any good at all.

All this talk brings me to my final question, and I think it's a good one. I think that Patrick hit the nail on the head when he suggested (in his comment to Ben's original post) that within the context of human rights discourse, there exists the notion of a "Wouldn't it be nice if…" world. This question has been gnawing at the back of my mind all semester, and I think it's time to ask: Is our definition of human right overly idealistic, so much so that it is not applicable to the world in which we live? By canonizing our conceptualization of human rights in the UDHR and other international norms, it seems to me that we are funneled into treating the world as if it were the world we think it ought to be, instead of the world that it truly is. Is there any country, state, or community in which the rights of the UDHR are fully upheld? How useful is this criteria, then, if even the model societies of the world cannot meet its standards? And further, how can we then expect to apply it to the parts of the world that fall so, immeasurably short of its idyllic ambitions? In a world with such vastly different societies, cultures, religions, traditions, socio-economic levels, ideologies, and politics, how helpful is it—really—to support human rights with one-size-fits all approach (credit, again, goes to Patrick for this phrase)? The difficulty of the sweatshop question highlights this inadequacy. I don't intend to pessimistically suggest that human rights discourse is entirely impracticable, but I think that if we ever want to extend the notion of human rights beyond the philosophy classroom and into the real world—a world of underdeveloped nations, sweatshops, and economists— then this must be seriously addressed. I must admit that I haven't yet found a satisfactory answer myself, so I'm hoping that one of you will have one.

Saturday, April 16, 2011

As many of you know, the GlobeMed chapter at Rhodes had a call for photo submissions in February, asking students and faculty/staff to complete the phrase, “Everyone has the right to ____,” and take a picture with their responses written on their hands. The purpose of the project was not for GlobeMed to weed through the submissions and pick out the ones that we thought reflected “proper” or “worthy” rights, but to spark discussion among the campus community around February 20th, the World Day of Social Justice.

After collecting the pictures and organizing them in an online gallery, along with the 31 other GlobeMed chapters that participated in similar projects on their campuses, we decided to put together an informal, video slideshow of the photos. The video caught the attention of Ben O’Neill, a formerly practicing lawyer and current statistics professor at the University of New South Wales in Canberra, Australia. In his article, “The Injustice of Social Justice,” O’Neill critiques the video’s portrayal of rights in order to argue that social justice campaigns are “intellectually bankrupt movements.”

I wanted to open this to discussion on the blog for a couple of reasons. Not only is the debate relevant to our class, but O’Neill claims that “most young people, at the age of undergraduate university students, have not been exposed to serious philosophical argument about the nature of rights...” That may be true, but we certainly have.

O’Neill argues that social justice organizations conflate desires with rights, and use the language of human rights to force governments to meet the needs of others. In retrospect, perhaps GlobeMed should have asked “everyone deserves ___” to avoid such misunderstandings. Yes, I agree that some of the “rights” depicted in the video are silly, such as the right to ice-cream. “An actual right is a moral prerogative derived from the application of moral philosophy to the nature of man,” O’Neill states. However, where I take issue with O’Neill’s argument is the claim that “it is actually no sillier to assert the right to rock-and-roll or ice cream than to assert the right to healthcare or education.” He argues that the differences between claiming a right to ice cream and a right to healthcare or education are “differences in degree, not in kind” because both are positive rights assertions that forcibly require someone else to provide a good for another person who is incapable of doing so by his or her own means. I think that the assertion for a right to health stems from a notion of fundamental human dignity, placing the right to a decent standard of health (Article 25, UDHR) in a completely different category from the "right" to ice cream.

Furthermore, O’Neill adds, “We see on the video an asserted right to ‘free education.’ We do not see the far more honest assertion of the right to ‘forcibly take money from others to pay for one’s own costly education.” Social justice organizations are not making this stuff up as they please. Article 26 of the UDHR states that “Everyone has the right to education. Education shall be free, at least in the elementary and fundamental stages...” Most social justice organizations are not arbitrarily inventing so-called rights as O’Neill argues in the article, but simply drawing attention to the already existing discourse and legislation on human rights.

O’Neill also argues that “there can be no such thing as a right to shoes, ice cream, or rock-and-roll, things that were once absent entirely from human invention.” One of many counter examples that stands out is from Article 15 of the UDHR, which states that “everyone has the right to a nationality.” In the scope of history, the concept of the nation-state, and thus the identity of nationality, is a relatively recent "invention." So, should we scrap Article 15 from the declaration because it asserts a right to an invented concept that has not existed from the very beginning of humanity?

According to recent reports, the U.S. government is putting pressure on several of its allies to end the use of child soldiers. The countries in question are Chad, the Democratic Republic of Congo, South Sudan, and Yemen. According to the reports, the international community is expecting the U.S. to take steps to end the practice of these much smaller countries. Given our recent discussions of vulnerability and community I have begun to wonder what it is that makes us responsible for policing the actions of these countries. While I am aware of the reputation that the U.S. has given itself as an international policeman, I wonder if the expectations placed upon the U.S. by the international community are not more complicated than simply the fact that the U.S. has given itself a certain reputation. Could it be that the reason that we are expected the reform these smaller countries is that they are viewed as much more vulnerable than we are as Butler may point out? In other words, I wonder if the nation that is considered the least vulnerable suddenly becomes responsible for all of the those more vulnerable countries with whom it associates. Assuming that vulnerability is the difference that makes us responsible for the actions of these nations that we have allied ourselves with, what would the consequences be if we were seen as equally as vulnerable as these countries that we are expected to police? If our responsibility is based upon vulnerability, would that responsibility dissapear entirely as result of equality or would the responsibility fall upon someone that is outside of the group who has less vulnerability? Of course, underlying all of these questions is whether the recognition of vulnerability gives us more or less right to act upon the sovereignty of another country. In the current situation, I am curious both what the current system would say and what Butler system would propose for this problem of policing.